When George Osborne unveiled his emergency Budget in June, voters applauded his tough message and approval for the Coalition rose to its peak. Initial public reaction to this week’s spending decisions is, not surprisingly, less ecstatic, for we can begin to see how the cuts will affect our daily lives. ...
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Our latest poll for the Sunday Times paints a mixed picture for the Coalition following last week’s spending review – reasons for comfort, but also reasons for concern. First, the good news: The Conservatives, on 41%, remain four points above their general election share. More people still think David Cameron ...
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At the end of a week that saw the Coalition battered over its plans to curb housing benefit, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats both stood at their highest levels for some weeks. In both cases the movements are small, and might be explained by sampling fluctuations. But we have to ...
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Call it courageous. Call it principled. Call it stupid. Call it being out of touch. However their actions are described, many Conservative and Liberal Democratic MPs are placing themselves at odds with the electorate when demanding an end to control orders and a reduction in the time a suspect may ...
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Six months ago the Liberal Democrats won 24% of the vote across Great Britain. Now they struggle to reach half that. One of our recent polls showed them on 9% - the first time any poll had reported a single-digit figure for more than 20 years; in general we have ...
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Thus far and no further: just under half of all Britons oppose the Government’s decision to lend money to Ireland, as part of the international bailout – but a large majority say we should give no such help to Spain or Portugal, the next two eurozone countries under pressure from ...
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To the old conundrum, what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object, the conventional answer is, an inaudible noise. However, when the Government’s policy on student fees collided with the Liberal Democrats’ election promise to oppose tuition fees and fight any increase, the noise from inside Nick Clegg’s ...
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Cast your mind back eleven weeks, to late September. Ed Miliband had just been elected Labour’s leader. David Cameron was preparing for the Conservatives' first conference in government for 14 years. Nick Clegg was basking in the glow of a successful and generally united Liberal Democrat conference. YouGov’s figures for ...
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The short answer is, yes they can – but not if they fail to grasp the size of the mountain they must climb. Recently AV enthusiasts have seized on an ICM poll for the Electoral Reform Society which finds that supporters of AV outnumber supporters of First-Past-The-Post. These are the ...
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Like our politicians, the public has been considering the vexed issue of control orders. When should civil liberties be curtailed for the sake of national security? Is there in fact a trade-off between the two? When, if ever, should someone’s freedom be curtailed without charging them or bringing them within ...
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